CED0525 Week Four Cooperative Learning and Feedback

The authors of our textbook recommend that teachers form student groups considering 5 elements:

• Positive interdependence
• Face to face promotive interaction (cheering each others efforts and accomplishments)
• Individual and group accountability
• Interpersonal and small group skills (communication skills, trust etc.)
• Group processing- reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better

I was happy for these suggestions and have been reflecting on them. Using cooperative learning groups presents many challenges, but also offers numerous benefits to students. Although it's third in the list, I've always been very concerned about 'individual and group accountability.' My husband tells tells a story of a high school group project that didn't go well when other group members didn't perform their parts of the project. When he discussed it with the teacher, the instructor told him to 'just make them do it.' Should the individual and group portions be weighted equally? Would this address a situation where one person just doesn't perform to the level of the rest of the group? Managing groups well contributes to how people perceive collaborating with others.

Group processing - the ability to reflect on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better is important. I think that this would be effective if done throughout a long term project. Hopefully it would prevent issues from arising. My only concern is how to model and coach students to do this in a manner than is productive and doesn't create a complaining session.

As I have already stated in our discussion forum, I never would have thought to actively demonstrate to students the connection of effort to results. In the past I've made statements to students like 'Try harder." Looking back at it-this wasn't very helpful. I liked our texts illustration of documenting effort and grades in a spreadsheet and then graphing the relationship. Eureka! I think I would perform an activity like this at the beginning of the year and maybe then again about half way through the year.